5 killed in TriMet crashes in 2023, deadliest year in nearly a decade

By Catalina Gaitán | OregonLive.com (TNS)

PORTLAND, ORE. — TriMet saw its deadliest year for traffic fatalities since 2014 last year, with five people dying after being struck by or colliding with buses or MAX trains.

Last year’s rise in fatal TriMet crashes happened as Portland experienced one of its deadliest years for motorists, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians. The city recorded 69 traffic deaths in 2023, compared with 36 in 2013, according to the Portland Bureau of Transportation.

Among last year’s traffic fatalities were two men killed in separate collisions with TriMet buses, the highest number of bus fatalities in a year since April 2010, when former Line 9 driver Sandi Day made an illegal left turn and crashed into five pedestrians in Northwest Portland’s Old Town neighborhood, killing two.

The drivers in both of last year’s fatal bus collisions were making left turns on their routes when the crashes happened. Both drivers were taken off the road after the transit agency determined their crashes were preventable, TriMet records show. And both victims had been experiencing homelessness at the time of the incidents. Unhoused Portlanders have accounted for a disproportionate number of traffic fatalities in recent years.

The transit agency agreed to pay the family of one of those victims, 54-year-old pedestrian Toby Fowler, $450,000 in September to settle a wrongful death complaint, court records show. Portland police cited the driver in the incident $140 for failing to obey a traffic device after investigators determined she hadn’t fully stopped her Line 15 bus at a stop sign before turning left at Northeast Portland’s Gateway Transit Center and striking Fowler on Feb. 14, 2023. She accepted a voluntary demotion and is now a bus maintenance worker, records show.

And TriMet fired another driver last year after he turned left on Northeast Columbia Boulevard without appearing to see a motorcycle speeding in the opposite lanes of traffic. The 41-year-old motorcyclist braked and swerved but couldn’t stop fast enough to avoid colliding with the side of the bus. Jonathan Gilkey died at the scene, records show.

On Tuesday, an attorney for Gilkey’s mother, Pamela Brochini, filed a tort claim notice with TriMet over the April 14 crash, records show.

Road safety advocate Michelle DuBarry said TriMet drivers remain some of the safest on the road thanks to the training they undergo and standards they’re held to. But even the safest drivers aren’t immune to crashes, she said.

“Our roads are not designed for safety; they’re designed for the speed of vehicles,” DuBarry said. “We’re trying to get around in a system that’s built for cars and not people, so it’s not a surprise to me that there would be fatalities at the hands of TriMet drivers just like there are fatalities at the hands of other drivers.”

Sarah Iannarone, executive director of The Street Trust, a nonprofit that promotes transportation safety across Oregon, agreed.

“These record-setting fatalities are why we need a safe-systems approach, because human error is a factor of life,” Iannarone said. “That it’s even possible for (vehicles) to collide is a pretty unfortunate function of the system we’ve designed.” ‘

A horrendous thing’

Two days before his move from Portland to central California, Jonathan Gilkey was doing what he loved most: driving his motorcycle.

Gilkey had just finished packing up his storage unit and was planning to be at his mother’s house first thing Monday morning in Mariposa, where she was going to help him get clean. After years of struggling with drug use, Gilkey wanted to be sober for his 2-month-old daughter, his mother said.

He would never get to meet her.

Gilkey died April 17, 2023, after crashing his Honda motorcycle into the side of a Line 75 bus near Northeast 52nd Avenue and Columbia Boulevard.

Pamela Brochini, 65, said her son’s ex-wife called to tell her about the crash.

Desperate for information, she said she paid for police and medical examiner’s reports that said her son was found with illicit drugs in his belongings and his system. He was driving up to 75 mph in a 35 mph zone with bald tires and no front brakes, according to records reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

But police also interviewed two witnesses who said they believed the bus driver, Adriss Aloui, caused the crash by turning left on Columbia Boulevard without appearing to notice Gilkey speeding toward him in the opposite lanes of traffic.

Gilkey’s motorcycle was visible in the bus’s front-facing surveillance camera footage about five seconds before the crash, records show. He disappeared from view as Aloui slowly turned left into the parking lot of the Native American Youth and Family Center, blocking the westbound lanes. Gilkey braked and swerved but couldn’t stop fast enough, colliding with the side of the bus at about 30 mph, records show.

Aloui told police at the scene that he didn’t see Gilkey. Surveillance footage from inside the bus shows Aloui primarily focusing to his left and on the entryway of the parking lot – not on oncoming traffic – before turning, records state.

“He admitted in that report he did not see my son,” Brochini said. “And I can’t get past that sentence.”

The transit agency fired Aloui on June 5 after determining his driving resulted in a preventable fatal accident, according to records reviewed by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Roberta Altstadt, a TriMet spokesperson, said the transit agency’s drivers are held to a higher standard for defensive driving than typical road users. And while Aloui hadn’t broken any traffic laws in the crash, he had failed to meet TriMet’s standards that day, she said.

The transit agency never contacted Brochini about the crash or to notify her that Aloui was fired. TriMet doesn’t typically reach out to the families of fatal crash victims because they don’t want to “insert ourselves in their grieving process,” Altstadt said.

“Our hearts go out to the loved ones left behind as well as our operators and our employees and we do try to support them through a horrendous ordeal,” she said. “Even if it means that they are no longer going to be with TriMet, we have the compassion to realize that this is a horrendous thing to take forward.”

Brochini said learning details about the crash, including that two witnesses believed Aloui had caused it, left her “blindsided.”

“The bus driver could have waited,” she said. “The bus driver admitted he didn’t see him.”

An earlier bus crash killed Toby Fowler at Northeast Portland’s Gateway Transit Center last February.

Fowler, who had been experiencing homelessness, was standing in the middle of Northeast Pacific Street when former Line 15 bus driver Rochelle Booze made a left turn and struck him.

Fowler died instantly from multiple blunt force injuries in the Feb. 14, 2023 crash, records show.

Booze told investigators that by the time she turned left onto Pacific Street going about 15 mph and saw what she thought was a “bike or scooter hauling stuff” in the path of her bus, it was too late. She heard a “thump,” stopped the bus and ran outside where she found Fowler on the ground, unresponsive and with his eyes open, records show.

Portland police cited Booze two months later for failing to obey a traffic device after investigators determined she hadn’t fully stopped her bus at the stop sign before turning left and crashing into Fowler, records show.

TriMet agreed to pay $450,000 to settle a wrongful death claim filed by Fowler’s three adult children in September, records show. Fowler’s children and their attorney, Roy Fernandes of Bridge City Law, did not respond to multiple inquiries from The Oregonian/OregonLive.

And Booze never drove a TriMet bus again.

After 25 years as a TriMet driver, Booze took a voluntary demotion and $28,000 pay cut to work as a bus maintenance worker earning $47,944, TriMet records show.

“She needed to not be in a position where she was driving, and you can’t be a bus operator and not drive,” Altstadt said.

The transit agency did not implement any changes based on last year’s fatal crashes, according to Altstadt. TriMet operators undergo defensive driving training and receive additional training if they are in a preventable accident, Altstadt said.

Three others were killed in fatal collisions with TriMet vehicles last year.

A MAX train struck and killed David Olson, 28, in Gresham while he was walking in a restricted area of the tracks on Oct. 19, officials said. The MAX operator hit the emergency brakes after seeing Olson, but couldn’t stop the train in time to avoid hitting him, Altstadt said.

And 19-year-olds Kaleb Banzer and Brayden Fear died Nov. 4 after jumping over a barrier and entering a restricted area of the MAX tracks along Interstate 84 in Northeast Portland, in the path of an oncoming train, Altstadt said.

An additional six people, including a TriMet bus driver, were injured after a bus crashed into two trees in Northeast Portland’s North Tabor neighborhood on Aug. 30. The driver and five passengers were taken to regional hospitals. TriMet has not publicly identified the driver or said what caused the crash.

— Catalina Gaitán covers public safety, politics, policing and more. You can reach Catalina at [email protected].

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